One Hundred Different Paths
by mailroomy
Summary: Very much AU, grossly without a beta. Severus found a way to remove the Dark Mark, and another way of life. Or something.
1. Chapter 1

**In the beginning...**

There was an old book, a very old one, with an old spell that offered him the world for the right payment. It took him all of a second to decide.

And once he expelled his breath, steeled himself and paid the price, he was surprised at how mild everything was. It wasn't painful. A mere sting really, no worse than a bogbug's bite. What surprised him was where he ended up waking. Wherever he thought he'd wake up in, never once did the hospital wing at Hogwarts crossed his mind.

* * *

But the hospital wing it was. The place was still too bright and sickeningly cheerful in his estimation. As bright and as sickeningly cheerful as the pair of blue eyes peering down at him.

"Hello, my boy," the eyes seemed to say. It took him a while to register that there was a mouth attached to the eyes, somewhere.

Severus spluttered and muttered, searching his bemuddled mind for correct strings of alphabets. His efforts dissipated together with dust dancing in sunlight when a set of five gnarly fingers descended upon his brow. Severus blinked and blinked, and blinked some more, fighting sleep's hold upon him. His eyes burned, insistently sleepy, annoyed at the prickly streams of light demanding him to wake.

"Take your time," another voice piped up from the other side of him, and he tried to twist to look at the source of that voice. "And the Headmaster should leave you to your rest, I think," the voice was warm but edged with steel, removing gnarly fingers from his brow almost instantaneously.

"I..." He wanted to ask a million things. Why, what, who, how, and a host of other questions. But little speckles of black danced across his eyelids, bright white spots ran up and down and sideways across his retina, and he had no choice but to retreat back into sleep.

* * *

It was also very bright when he woke up next. There were voices, floating around him, floating above the buzz of silence. One voice sounded a bit like reprimand, though it didn't seem as though it was directed at him. Another voice sounded a bit like amusement. There were shuffles, and little tinkles and he thought he could hear the sound of birds and trees and the subtle shift of castle stones and the breeze outside.

"Hello again," someone greeted him. This time he remembered, his mind supplying the correct information attached to the voice he had never forgotten.

Severus cleared his throat once, twice, and a third time for luck before greeting the Headmaster and then Madam Pomfrey who hovered just right there. His vision had not returned, but their shadows were bright enough for him to remember. It's not like he's forgotten seven years of his life here.

"What happened?" the Headmaster asked, and Severus saw a flash of admonishment, a short hiss coming from the school nurse aimed at... well, thankfully not him. Severus fidgeted as the Headmaster fidgeted under Madam Pomfrey's gaze. "You can tell us later," the Headmaster amended.

"No," Severus said, fashioning words around rusty syllables of a rarely-used voice box. He needed to talk, lest he lost the ability, or the will, to talk. Muteness, Severus had found, was oddly soothing. "Now."

The Headmaster's acquiescence and the School Nurse's indignance clashed and danced in the air, and Severus found it amusing. He closed his eyes but kept his ears open. He felt an odd tug of a smile, and felt his face crackle, crumble, reinventing itself. It couldn't look very good, he thought, and found his thought amusing. "Nothing happened," he said, testing words on his tongue, testing words that weren't 'yes, My Lord', 'very well', or 'I obey'. Other words that might or might not exist in a Dark Acolyte's vocabulary. "Nothing happened," he repeated. "I merely paid what was due."

He tried to smile again, and was mildly surprised that it hurt less than last time, his face didn't try to reform itself. It must've looked odd, though, judging from the sounds around him. He closed his eyes, composing a story in his mind.


	2. Chapter 2

**Two Brothers, and the Boy Who Slept in Light...**

They placed him by a window, where morning light would greet him first thing every morning, and stayed with him for as long as wood and stone allowed. There, by the window he slept the sleep of the dead, the sleep of the heedless. The sun, journeying across the sky as it would each day, was never harsh; as if it was really the all-knowing Phoebus caring after his son who had fallen.

And how this dark boy had fallen, The Headmaster mused, one terribly fine day, as he watched the still figure sleeping within a shaft of light. More light in these scant days than he'd ever seen in his short, miserable life, the old wizard thought. He watched as darkness was bleached out, like ink disappearing from parchment too long exposed to the sun. He watched as inky oppressive darkness leeched out of the boy, even when he couldn't say whether it was the magic of the sun, or something else he couldn't say.

But he had no time to waste on trifle philosophy. The boy would rouse, and everything would be explained away in those dry cutting tones, wit and thorough decisiveness he had only found out

(an explanation that would most probably start with an argument that the Headmaster should stop calling him "boy", for really, even the Headmaster knew that Severus Snape had never really been a boy, in so many sense of the word. But maybe, despite all of it, he still was. The boy-the Headmaster would insist-just couldn't see it for what it was).

He couldn't remember why he sought out the boy's apprentice papers and school-boy treatises after all these times, maybe to assuage his unnamable guilt (of what? he couldn't be sure), maybe a little bit of whim, a spur of the moment, maybe something else. He hadn't time to unravel this little bit of self-inflicted mystery as he came upon a door and let himself in.

* * *

_And so the Dumbledore of the Tower,  
descended down from the castle proper,  
went he did across the moats,  
to the Dumbledore who tilled the earth and fed the goats._

Though no boy in the darkness of a midnight clear,  
sat under the door to hear,  
Twas no shortage of unworthy ears,  
thus float news to the One everybody fears.

* * *

And through it all, Severus slept.


	3. Chapter 3

**Everything Fades With Time  
**

A lot of things happened when light yielded to darkness, as the shadows in the infirmary danced, writhed and stretched in purple pink light. In the morning, he went about his duties, now burdened by one more secret he gleaned from a witch that might or might not be all put together 'up there'. At nights, he sat vigil by this boy, who stubbornly clung to unconsciousness.

He had sat there for days. Or maybe more.

He had not measured Time so diligently as he would in the past, an inkling of breakfast there, a reminder to meet at the Ministry here. He measured time in the inconsequential turning of light and dark, often misleading within this pile of cavernous grey stones.

He had sat there maybe for a week, give or take a few days.

And maybe it was tiredness, as good, kind Pomfrey had insisted. But he thought he saw how Night would embrace the boy and took with it a sliver of dark from his forearm. He thought he saw what Night couldn't take, Day would bleach away. He thought he saw things shift and change.

He sat there for another three days, give or take. Approximate, nevercorrect.

Until he was almost convinced he was seeing things. Like staring into the same place for too long a time, like staring at the sun. He had sat there for another minute, sighing at the stubbornly sleeping boy.

He turned around as the sun began to set, as the shadow stretched from the window reaching for the fire sconces across the room. He was about to exit when he heard patient, earnest Pomfrey speak. Hushed and low her voice soft and strident yet. He turned around to listen better, as the last sliver of shadow touched the fire sconce furthest away; it's darkness beget light of magical fire.

"Pardon my old ears," he apologized, as she ambled back towards her, bathed in the healing glow of a hall of healing.

"It's maybe nothing," she said, smiling to him as she turned down a corner of the boy's sheets, shifting him here and there to let no rot find residence on those almost-never-there muscles.

"What is?" he tilted his head slightly as he followed the seemingly awkward crook of the boy's right arm against the bed.

"It's not as dark as before," she replied, as she manipulated the boy's torso, a calisthenic regime for a broken doll.

"What is?" he tilted his head the other way now, following her line of vision to settle against the ugly brand-like mark seared against his forearm.

"It seemed less... I don't know... less vivid, I guess..." she pondered, measuring her words slowly, as she bent legs and stretched long pale neck.

"It seems so," he said, straightening, looking at the boy's face almost at the same time as she did.

"He looked less appealing, too. More tired, even with all this sleep," she said, frowning, searching for words that would not insult her oblivious patient. Brushing cool fingers against the slightly fevered cheek, more gaunt and sallow, uneven and diluted, like a painted face of a statue fading with each brush of wind and time.

"Maybe," the Headmaster said, spine straight and eyes half-lidded with concern. Maybe you need your rest, too."

And after a while they left the boy, asleep on a bed at the end of empty rows, hidden behind a screen. Alone in the room created to cater for many. Maybe they should think of moving him to a place away from prying eyes. Eyes that would look at him in disgust, dismay, or fear.

Old, tired Poppy turned to look at her charge one last time and saw Night embracing the child.


	4. Chapter 4

**A Lifetime Ago  
**

"Evans, Lily" was sorted Gryffindor before the hour was up; as was, regrettably, "Black, Sirius". A slew of others followed, like a "Lupin, Remus" then, also quite regrettably (but possibly also inevitably) "Potter, James".

It was testament to Gryffindor's general one-track-mindedness, and the especially bloated self-entitlement of a certain "Potter, James God-Be-My-Middle-Name", that rumours began to spread about Snape's long minutes on the stool and subsequent sorting to Slytherin.

_Afraid of Potter and Black, my arse, _Snape had cursed up and down the his room. As if he wouldn't just grit his teeth and beg to be put in the same house with his best friend, his only friend, really. As if he'd abandon her to be with a houseful of hissing strangers. As if he'd given up Lily's radiance for the darkness of the dungeons.

They had of course, conveniently forgotten about "Prince, Julian" being called right after Potter, and right before Snape. Not even the Headmaster, and the various professors who had been around long enough to teach a certain "Prince, Eileen" made the connection.

Not even after the headmaster called the Snape boy to the office, one bright autumn day in the beginning of his fourth year (was it?) to pass on the regretful news of the untimely demise of Snape the Elder. "Heart attack," the Headmaster had said. And the old man who prided himself as a good reader of people, had not recognised the lack of sadness on the pale boy's face.

Not even after the magical student registry noted that the younger Snape moved from Spinner's End to Claudian Cottage on the eastern grounds of Prince Manor.

Not even after a longish column in the Prophet hailing the return of the prodigal daughter back into the Prince's family fold. A fallen branch restored to its proper place as if by magic. Indeed by the application of magic upon a certain boy's left forearm.

If there was ever another woman that Severus Snape loved more than Lily Evans, it would be Eileen Prince.

* * *

He loved her when she laughed, clear as a bell, during those stolen moments of lucidity. He had loved her even when she was weak, cowering under an undeserved muggle's fist, forgetting that she was a powerful witch. He had loved her even when she had forgotten his name, then a few months later, her own name. He had loved her even when it had cost him his best friend.

And nobody was quite aware of it, even though it should be completely clear as a summer's sky.

* * *

Severus had paid the price for this love particular, the Headmaster now realised, as he sat next to the sleeping boy. But now she was no longer alive to receive it, and this boy was finally free to pay yet another price.

A price for his freedom. Possibly another price too costly to bear.

As the sun rose up and his duties as Headmaster called upon him once again, he hoped that the boy would find that all may not be lost.

Now, if only the boy would just stop being so bloody stubborn and wake up.

* * *

(tbc...)

_postscript: boatloads of thanks go to duj and risi, and everyone who continues to be patient with this particular story. I too hope that the bloody wanker would wake up soon so the adventure could begin. Honestly, now. _


	5. Chapter 5

**The First Day of the Rest of Your Life**

He didn't even register waking up. He didn't even know whether he was awake or that bright purple skies with orange clouds were part of his dream. He had forgotten if he had dreamt or not, he wasn't sure if he had ever dreamt of sky-gazing, a lazy leisurely thing to do. He didn't know how long he stared at it wondering when the procession of orange clouds would change into something else.

"You're awake, finally," someone said from somewhere over there. He tried to turn around but his muscles were foreign to him. It was a struggle, his brains frantically sending signals to his muscles to move, and the effect felt strange to him. He saw, rather than felt, his arm moved slightly sideways and he saw the room rotate as he turned his head to face the person speaking.

He saw her, and his cobwebbed brain recognised her somehow. Then belatedly it gave him her name. He opened his mouth to greet her but all that came out sounded like a rusty hinge of a cemetery gate.

Something cool touched his lips and soothed his parched throat. Madam Pomfrey loomed above him as she helped him, and Severus watched her in a small wonder. And when she moved away he was left staring at the ceiling.

He felt the walls to the side of him, and the sound of birds singing outside of it. Not exactly singing, he thought, they sounded more like fire engine sirens, like he so often heard when he was young. The moving clouds made strange light patterns across the ceilings and walls. The effect, he found, was not too unpleasant. Intriguing in fact. Everything was rather pleasant, he supposed, unconsciously humming to match the annoying bird's sirensong.

And so it dawned to him, and when Madam Pomfrey returned, he opened his mouth and cleared his throat, "Not. Azk..."

"No," she did not let him finish his words, placing the back of her palm on his forehead and looking down at him in a way that felt unthreatening.

"Hog. Warts?" he asked, trying to rush through his words, but failed to do so with his foggy brain and rusty throat.

"Yes, of course," she smiled as she helped him scoot higher up the bed.

"Why?"

"Why ever not?" she answered cryptically, and Severus thought that her smile, in this light, looked like that of the Sphinx.

He didn't know if Madam Pomfrey returned to do anything else to him. He only remembered staring at the sky through the window by his bed. He rememered falling asleep, too. And remembered to wake up the next day.

* * *

He still had difficulty telling his limbs to move the way he wanted them, at the speed he wanted them to. He still had difficulty conversing, his throat so long unused. He wanted to ask how long he'd been asleep, but was afraid to hear how lazy he were.

The annoying fire engine birds were still singing outside, and he made a silent vow to track them down once he could. He couldn't remember hearing these birds all those years ago when he was still a student. Maybe he did, maybe he just didn't pay any attention to them, then. He hadn't paid as much attention to most things back then.

* * *

He gradually woke up earlier and earlier and stayed awake longer and longer. He heard Madam Pomfrey tinkering in the background, preparing things to greet the first day of September. He heard her told him off-handedly how the Headmaster had been a frequent visitor when Severus was sleeping ("must be some interesting dreams, to make you sleep that long," she chided).

Severus found it hard to believe. He's been awake for days and he had seen neither beard nor garish robes of the Headmaster. But he kept quiet. Madam Pomfrey seemed too preoccupied to lie. Later on that night, she told him that the Headmaster had business in London, and wasn't expected to be back anytime soon. Maybe a week, she had said.

They talked about nonsense, skirting around some subjects that she wanted very much to ask and he wanted very much to avoid. Like him being here, like his 'career' after leaving Hogwarts, like a lot of other things.

He began to move more, his limbs now recognising the commands given by his brain. "You've been asleep for weeks," Madam Pomfrey had said, had assured him that it wasn't some permanent disability. Only sluggishness after being unused for so long. He'd started by sitting up, then taking short steps around his bed, and then the Hospital wing. He never dared move outside of the wing, afraid of overstepping his boundaries. Because as far as prisons went, the Hospital wing wasn't so bad at all.

* * *

A few days later, he was sitting up in his bed, preoccupied with his latest hobby of watching the clouds and trying to figure out what the fire engine bird looked like. He had discarded bright red with flashing beaks, and was now contemplating something more sedate, but with a larger shape.

"I've been meaning to ask you," Madam Pomfrey said as she sat by him. She must've just finished brewing some potions for the stores, she looked a bit tired but quietly satisfied.

"Ask me what?"

"That burn mark," she said, pointing to the side of his face.

Surprised, he turned around to face her. "Burn mark?" his fingers rose up to touch the spot she was pointing at.

"It appeared when you were sleeping. It didn't appear abruptly, mind you, but slowly, like an optical illusion. It was very faint at first I thought the light was playing tricks on me. But every day I visited you, it became a bit more vivid. What is it?"

Severus stared at her, his fingers worrying the disfigured skin under his right eye, across his cheek. "I... I've forgotten about this... but..." he stared at her a while, eyes growing larger and larger, it had caused some irrational worry at the back of her mind that it would pop out. "But... That... that means..."

He almost hit the nurse as he brought his left arm up to his face. He squinted at his forearm, then looked up at her in disbelief. "It worked!" his exclamation came out in a harsh whisper, his eyes glittering wildly, surprise, disbelief, joy, and something else Madam Pomfrey couldn't know. For a while, she thought she was looking at a younger Severus, younger than his twenty years of age. Like a burden had been lifted from him.

"It worked! It's gone!" he jumped onto his feet.

"Yes, I wondered about that, too," Madam Pomfrey replied. "It disappeared slowly, too. I thought it was just some ink that disappeared as it's bleached away by the sun. You know, like some non-permanent ink, like henna."

"It's not henna," Severus replied, amusement in his eyes.

"It disappeared as slowly as that burn mark appearing on your face. I recognised some shallow scars appearing as it did, too. What happened?"

"It's... it's a..." he floundered for words, each syllable swimming in his mind trying to come out in a torrent all at once. "It's a long story," he finally said, unable to keep his eyes away from his unblemished forearm. He hadn't dared look at it these past few days since he woke up, a small irrational fear had gripped him every time he had tried to look. But now, how odd, he couldn't stop looking.

Madam Pomfrey stared at Severus, who looked so odd. She didn't remember him being so... gregarious, in the years that she knew him as a Hogwarts student. She remembered him as a small shadow flitting across corridors, a sullen boy with bad posture like a bad omen was hanging on his shoulders.

She had to smile now, looking at Severus, all grown up, no longer a school boy, trying very hard to keep his body from doing a silly dance, staring all the while at his forearm. She smiled and sighed fondly, rising up to her feet. "Well, I suppose it would be an interesting one. The Headmaster would probably like to hear it, too."

That seemed to sober Severus up quite a bit. He stood rigidly straight, looking at her now. "The Headmaster's here?"

"He's not back yet, no," she said, brushing small wrinkles off her apron. "But soon. At least that's what he said when he floo'd this morning." She looked at him as he stumbled back to bed, all excitement gone, replaced by a sort of anxiety that made her a bit sad. "I was about to leave a note for him to come down and see you." Severus turned to study her intently, quiet. And to her horror, starting to close in on himself once more. "But, I think you've been cooped up with an old lady like me too much these past days, don't you think?" She smiled and helped him up. "You do still remember the way to the Headmaster's office don't you?"

He stared at her, and nodded minutely. "Well then, I think a longish walk would do you a lot of good," she said, merrily, pushing him towards the door. "And it's still _lemon drops_."

Severus nodded at Madam Pomfrey (who promised she'll join him and the Headmaster as soon as she's able), and went out of the door as in a daze. Before he reached the door proper, however, her voice called out to him. He halted and turned around. "Wait," she said, as she made her way to her office. "I think I have your wand here somewhere."

"It's fine!" he called to her, stopping her on her tracks. "I don't think I'll need it anymore."

* * *

(tbc...)

_a/n: well, he's awake! he's alive!  
*grin*_

_to excessivelyperky: i'm glad you've enjoyed it thus far, hopefully you'll continue to enjoy it. and about Dumbledore, i think he's just being a big softie, and an educator at heart. i suppose, technically one can only hope and do the best for each student passing under one's care, but still it won't stop a teacher from being a bit sad if a student turned a bad leaf. it's just something i thought about following a conversation with a teacher a few months ago. she's been teaching for more than 50 years (and still going strong), and she admits to feeling a bit guilty when she hears about some 'unfortunate' turn of life of some of her students, even though she realistically knew that she can't help them all. hopefully, it doesn't make Dumbledore off-colour too much._

_risi: i must confess half the reason why severus spent so much time sleeping was because i didn't quite know what to do with him once he's awake :) and we'll definitely learn more about his backstory now he's awake enough to tell it! and hopefully, i'll still be able to do it without further confusing everyone. the story, i think, is confusing as it is already._

duj: thank you for bearing with me all this time! i thought at first it was 'puppy-love' for him, Lily a refreshing change to the sullenness of his own family; and that he clung to this image of her that he's made up in his mind, until his death. hopefully, here he'd have more interaction with Lily, discover a few things about himself, and her also; and since it's 1980, Lily would be Mrs. Potter anyway. So, I suppose it'll be interesting how Severus interacts with his ex-school friends without the trappings that so limited his interactions in canon.

_thank you to everyone who reviewed, and thank you to all the readers :) i hope i haven't dug myself into an irredeemable hole with this story.  
_


End file.
